3 Week Project as part of the Other Today Studio at University of Brighton 2nd Product Design

• My project began with an interest in using a textile as the sheet material. Early on I focused on fabrics such as canvas for use in a wallet or similar application. While exploring materials, I came across ‘Mighty Wallet’; a wallet made from a Tyvek envelope. I often see Tyvek in skips so decided to research Tyvek further. Several people online have used the material for tote bags, drawstring bags and the like, however this is from virgin rolls of tyvek not offcuts. Tyvek do offer a recycling system for its products but it is highly inaccessible and offers no benefits to the construction companies.
• This is my supply chain intercept point, providing an alternative to throwing away the material into skips. I could either remove the waste Tyvek from skips when they get sorted after collection, or work with the construction companies to set aside the Tyvek scraps to be sent via post as a bundle would be quite light. Alternatively a local rep could collect offcuts from several worksites and send it to the manufacturer in a larger bundle. This would save them money from skips costs and prevent this useful material from entering the landfill.
• I wanted the product to stick to the materials origins as much as possible, ensuring that the product didn’t have far to be sold, so I focused on something for the worksite, such as tool storage. Storing tools on a worksite in a well organised manner is essential to an efficient building process so I saw producing a strong bag to hold the essentials from an inexpensive material as an opportunity.
• Research into origami and different folding methods for paper worked well for finding the strongest and most space efficient storage method. The traditional method of producing pockets uses oddly shaped material and leaves the material proud which can catch and tear on worksite obstructions when not being used. The origami folds I used keeps the pockets flat when not being used.
• Leaving it with a clean aesthetic was important such as hiding the stitches, but the strength of the joints was paramount, where these folds came into play. I also has very little waste and fold into itself to ship as its own envelope.

• I found the material quite nice to sew and cut as it is very much like paper. It’s easy to cut square and fold in the right places. I see a lot of potential in other products that could be made with the material, from smaller items such as a safety glasses case, or stuff sacks for waterproof clothing to an entire storage rack for a van or digger. Very specific tool kits for jobs could be made in the material as tool rolls, such as a daily maintenance kit for an excavator.
• The main benefits of using this material are of course the interception of a waste stream, with very standard sizes of offcuts. They are almost always full width offcuts, and therefore designs can easily be made parametrically according the the length of offcuts.
• Since the material can be laser cut means these parametric designs can be simply cut out without any complications, depending on the material available.
• Changes to the current design would include making it entirely machine sewable and placing a solid bottom into the caddy to make it more stable (although this isn’t within the brief).

Research Appendix